Tag Archives: book giveaway

Today I am the very last stop in the blog tour for From the Kitchen of Half Truth by Maria Goodin. I’ve got lots of things planned today-a giveaway, a mini-interview with Goodin, a topic we can all discuss (even if you have not read the book), and a review.

About the Book:

Infused with the delicious warmth of Chocolat and captivating feeling of School of Essential Ingredients, FROM THE KITCHEN OF HALF TRUTH is the warm, tender story of Meg, who can’t convince her cooking-obsessed, fairy-tale loving mother to reveal a thing about their past, even as sickness threatens to hide those secrets forever. Driven to spend one last summer with her mother, Meg must face a choice between what’s real and what we make real, exploring the power of the stories we tell ourselves in order to create the lives we want.

About the Author:

Maria Goodin

Maria Goodin was born in the South-East of England. Her first novel, ‘Nutmeg’, was published in the UK in 2012, and was based on an award-winning short story of the same title. The novel was published later that year in Australia under the title of ‘The Storyteller’s Daughter’, and was released in the US under the title ‘From the Kitchen of Half Truth’. Book deals have also been secured in Italy, Germany, Spain and Sweden. Following a varied career which included administration, teaching and massage therapy, Maria trained to be a counselor, and her novel was inspired by her interest in psychological defenses. She lives and writes in Hertfordshire.

I’m giving away a copy of From the Kitchen of Half Truth today to US and Canada residents only so enter now. Please fill out the brief form below by 5 pm ET today. I will choose a winner at random using random.org. Good luck!

I am very excited to be part of my very first blog tour! Today, I am the first stop on TLC Book Tours’ TheEnchanted Life of Adam Hope blog tour. Up first is my interview with wonderful debut novelist Rhonda Riley. I will also be reviewing this tale today and giving away a copy of the book. Thanks to Rhonda, TLC Book Tours, and Trish Collins.

Jaime Boler: Thank you, Rhonda, for letting me ask you these questions! I see extraordinary things for The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope and am quite excited to be part of TLC Book Tour’s blog tour. You are a graduate of the creative writing program at the University of Florida. Did you always want to be a novelist?

Rhonda Riley

Rhonda Riley: Thank you for your enthusiasm for Adam Hope. I’m happy to be here. As a very young woman, I wanted to be a variety of things (political activist, lawyer, child psychologist), but [being a] writer didn’t occur to me until I was in my 20s and then my focus was poetry and creative nonfiction.

Novels seemed daunting. And I thought in poems then. I couldn’t imagine how writers got their arms around something [as] big as a novel. All those pages! I was in my 40s before I ever thought of writing a novel. And Adam Hope is the first and only novel I’ve written.

JB: How many publishers were chomping at the bit for your debut? How did it feel to sell your debut novel at auction?

RR: To tell you the truth, I don’t quite remember. There were four or five publishers very interested and the serious bidding came down to three, I think. The process was thrilling and surreal, and I do not use the word “surreal” lightly. Everything seemed to happen exactly the way it was supposed to, and, at the same time, it was so unexpected. I feel very fortunate.

JB: Please describe The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope in ten words or less.

JB: How did you come up with the idea for The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope?

RR: I was writing nonfiction and poems trying to tell a few truths about my family. After several attempts, I gave up [on] truth and decided to make up stuff. That kicked the door wide open. Then, one day, I got an image of two hands touching in the mud, and I knew their contact involved some kind of transformation or transmission between two people. From there, I followed that single image. I didn’t imagine the whole book or even the entirety of Adam’s character in one swoop. It came about in increments.

JB: Many writers say they hear the voices of characters in their heads before a story takes shape. Was this true for you? If so, I’m curious as to whose voice you heard first: Addie, Adam, or Evelyn?

RR: I definitely heard Evelyn’s voice first. In fact, it was Evelyn’s voice and her character, not Adam’s, that drove me to write the story. Hers was the voice that obsessed me. I knew she was the teller of the story. Adam’s/Addie’s voice, in all its uniqueness, evolved.

I first got the idea for his voice from something that happened to a friend of mine. She was awakened one morning by a beautiful, mysterious sound that seemed to come through her body, an experience that left her euphoric.

Then, years later, I was once sitting on the toilet in the ladies room in one of the old bathrooms at UF (you take your inspiration where you can get it). The stall walls were marble and I discovered, quite by accident, that if I leaned forward while singing the second note of the Gloria chorus, my voice and the thin marble resonated in a lovely way. My head and chest vibrated. And I thought how wonderful it would be if we could do that to each other.

Thus, Adam’s voice. The first time I heard Tibetan singing bowls was a turning point in creating a description of his vocal abilities.

JB: I read that the original title for the novel was Adam Hope: A Geography. Why was the title changed?

RR: My editor and agent both thought it was a cool title, but potentially confusing rather than intriguing. Confusing enough that it might put some readers off. A work of fiction that announces itself as a geography probably would lead to some pretty frustrating search results. Personally, I like titles that immediately make me ask questions like: “A geography of a person, what would that be?” But others prefer titles that answer the question: “What’s in this book?” I decided to trust the opinion of my editor and agent. They have much more experience in getting people take a book off the shelf. My job is to keep people reading once they open the book.

JB: One of the myriad things I love about your novel is that it crosses genres (supernatural, mystery, love story, historical fiction, debut fiction, literary fiction) and will attract many different readers. How important was it to you to appeal across genres?

RR: Actually, it was a little scary when I began to realize where I was taking the story. I was afraid it would keep me from finding a publisher. But I made a decision early on to write the story I wanted and needed to write, to write it the best I could, and then think about genres and publication later. I didn’t set out to cross genre boundaries, but I do like the fact that it worked out that way, and it certainly makes sense for a book that features someone like Adam who crosses genres of self. As a reader, I am very comfortable with books that don’t fit neatly into one category. The transgression of boundaries can be fun.

JB: Adam Hope is such an unconventional character, one literally made in the image of others. How did you dream him up?

RR: I think Adam appears unconventional because he is in a conventional context and he is narrated by a pretty conventional person, but characters with special abilities have been popping up in stories for a very long time. He is sort of the reverse of the zombies and vampires so popular now.

I built him gradually, one characteristic at time. One clear memory I have of consciously making a decision about him was when I chose his occupation. I wanted him to be connected to the natural world and animals. I wanted him to be associated with a large, powerful animal, one capable of being domestic and wild. Horses seemed such a perfect fit for him.

For me the center of the story of Evelyn and Adam is its play on differences and similarities, intimacy and strangeness, the other and the self. Androgyny also seemed a natural fit for Adam in that it bridges two opposites.

JB: You have your very own Adam and Eve (Evelyn) in this story, your very own Genesis. How difficult was it to fashion these characters?

RR: Evelyn was easy, I just recalled my mother’s voice and that seemed to lead very naturally to a defined character. I think of Evelyn as being made up of two of my favorite women, my mother and my great aunt, Lil. Adam was more difficult—a lot more pondering and experimentation on my part.

JB: What kind of research did you do for The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope?

RR: I did a good deal of research about farm life and textile mills of the Carolinas in the 1940s. Very little of it actually shows up in the novel. In the end, I relied mostly on the stories my mother had told me. But I think the research, especially reading newspapers from the period, helped me more fully imagine the world I wanted to create.

I had to do some research on horses, since I was not familiar with them. And I had horse-loving friends who helped me there.

The most challenging research was finding photos of the genitalia of infant hermaphrodites so that I could describe Gracie’s birth. Luckily, I live near a university medical library and didn’t have to rely on the internet for that research.

JB: The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope has been compared to The Time Traveler’s Wife and The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, huge bestsellers and brilliant novels (well-deserved praise, in my opinion). How do such comparisons make you feel?

RR: I am honored to be compared to them. Lauren Groff also wrote me a great blurb comparing the book to the work of Alice Munro and Gabriel Garcia Marquez– that actually made me blush when I first read it. I think The Time Traveler’s Wife is a particularly apt comparison since Adam Hope is also a realistic, contemporary treatment of a surreal situation. That was the comparison I used to get my agent’s attention.

JB: Did you know how big this novel could be while you were writing it?

RR: I was hoping for publication and some degree of success, of course. But no, I can’t think about that while I am writing. And I have to ignore those wild fluctuations in my own psyche. One day it looks like a the greatest story I every wrote; the next day, all of it looks like crap.

While I was trying to find an agent, I stumbled on a very humorous new word on one agent’s blog: casturbation. It is the act of imagining, before you finish your novel, who will play the lead in the movie based on it. There are some fun and tempting fantasies in the process, but while I am writing, I really have to think only about the story.

JB: Who did you envision playing your leading characters?

RR: For Adam, some combination of Johnny Depp (prior to his piracy days) and John Goodman (in his younger, Barton Fink days). One because of his pretty face and ability to be a little offbeat and the other for his ability to be physically imposing and ordinary. For Evelyn, Tilda Swinton. All these actors are now too old to play these parts. Guess that must say something about me. Or about how long I took to write the story.

JB: Hey, I love Johnny Depp! He never goes out of style. Neither do John Goodman and Tilda Swinton. Great actors, all. How many drafts did The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope go through? How different were the earlier drafts from the final version?

RR: I don’t really know. I lost track. I’d say six or seven drafts, including the final ones with my editor. But some of the last drafts were partial revisions where we were working only on the final chapters. The first three or four drafts were very different from the final one.

The whole novel was once a series of letters Evelyn wrote to her daughters and it included a lot of information about her life as an old woman. Lots of italics to indicate the time changes! And I included Evelyn’s daughters’ emails to each other about her. I really loved writing about Evelyn as old woman. But, after getting feedback from friends and a couple of agents who liked my writing but not the format, I changed the entire novel.

I got about 80 pages into a third-person version, but I couldn’t make that feel right, so I switched to a straight first-person narration without letters.

JB: What is a typical day of writing like for you?

RR: It varies wildly, I am not a disciplined person, but when I am on [a writing kick], it is four to five hours a day. I meet a couple times a week with some other writers. We all meet at one woman’s house and we just write. We don’t talk, our phones are off and there is no internet. Group self-discipline. It’s great!

JB: Who are some of your favorite authors and/or what are some of your favorite books?

RR: I love the stories of Alice Munro. They always seem so seamless. She makes writing appear effortless. I like Robert Olen Butler’s Tabloid Dreams. I am on a Louise Erdrich kick now, trying to decipher what I like so much about the narration of The Master Butchers Singing Club. Whatever it is, I want to be able to do it as well as she does. But my favorite book is Michael Ondaatje’s In the Skin of a Lion. Beautiful language. So seductive. And a pretty fantastic story, too. I can’t get over it.

JB: What are you currently reading?

RR: I am currently reading Laura Lee Smith’s debut novel Heart of Palm. I just met her and she lives about an hour from me, in St. Augustine, Florida, We’re thinking of doing a little mini-Florida tour together. I just finished The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. Those two are very different books and good in very different ways. I’m also reading Generation Zombie (an academic take on the zombie phenomena) by Wylie Lenz and Stephanie Boluk. I’m one chapter into The Righteous Mind, and on the last pages of Karen Armstrong’s The Battle for God. And every month I read Discover magazine. I read a lot of nonfiction.

JB: What do you like to do when you aren’t writing?

RR: Dawdle and travel. Dawdling and traveling might seem to be contradictory activities but the best travel must involve some dawdling. After a long session writing, I like to do anything that involves not sitting down. One of the hardest parts of writing is all the desk time. I used to have hobbies, but I’ve gotten lazy. Friends, pets, a backyard and writing can take up a lot of time if you do them right.

JB: What do you hope readers take with them after reading The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope?

RR: I would hope they find mysteries–the small ones as well as the big ones– easier to accept and listen to. I’d be pleased if, after meeting Adam, they found the strangeness of the stranger more interesting than alien.

JB: Are there any plans to turn the novel into a movie?

RR: Nothing now, but I have an agent and a film rights agent. I know some folks involved in the film industry have read the book. But there are no plans at this point. I would love to see how someone would do Adam’s voice in a movie.

JB: What’s next for you? Are you working on anything new?

RR: I’m very curious about how Adam Hope will be received. I’ve been inviting readers to come up with their own ideas and illustrations of where Adam is now and to share those speculations. He/She could be anyone anywhere, you know. Meanwhile, I am working on a new, completely unrelated novel about sin and innocence. I also have lots of notes and an outline for a sequel to Adam Hope.

JB: OOH, I can’t wait for that! Thank you so much, Rhonda, for a wonderful interview. I know readers are going to love the book just as much as I do. Good luck!

March 19 is the publication date for Jane Green’s newest novel, Family Pictures.

About the Book:

New York Times bestseller Jane Green delivers a riveting novel about two women whose lives intersect when a shocking secret is revealed.

From the author of Another Piece of My Heart comes the gripping story of two women who live on opposite coasts but whose lives are connected in ways they never could have imagined. Both women are wives and mothers to children who are about to leave the nest for school. They’re both in their forties and have husbands who travel more than either of them would like. They are both feeling an emptiness neither had expected. But when a shocking secret is exposed, their lives are blown apart. As dark truths from the past reveal themselves, will these two women be able to learn to forgive, for the sake of their children, if not for themselves?

About the Author:

British import Jane Green is the author of twelve bestselling novels, dealing with real women, real life, and all the things life throws at them, with her trademark wisdom, wit and warmth.

A former feature writer for the Daily Express in the UK, Green took a leap in faith when she left, in 1996, to freelance and work on a novel. Seven months later, there was a bidding war for her first book, Straight Talking, the saga of a single career girl looking for the right man. The novel was a hit in England, and Green was an overnight success.

The success got even sweeter when her second novel, Jemima J, became an international bestseller. Cosmopolitan called this cheerful, updated Cinderella story “the kind of novel you’ll gobble up in a single sitting.”

Now in her early forties, Green has graduated to more complex, character-driven novels that explore the concerns of real women’s lives, from marriage (The Other Woman) to motherhood (Babyville) to midlife crises (Second Chance). The Beach House and Second Chance spent months on the New York Times Bestseller list.

As well as writing a daily blog: http://www.janegreen.com, she contributes to various publications, both online and print, including Huffington Post, The Sunday Times, Wowowow, and Self.

A foodie and passionate cook, Green filled her latest book, Promises to Keep, with recipes culled from her own collection. She says she only cooks food that is “incredibly easy, but has to look as if you have slaved over a hot stove for hours.” This is because she has six children, and has realised that “when you have six children, nobody ever invites you anywhere.”

Most weekends see her cooking for a minimum of twenty people in her home in Westport, Connecticut, where she lives with her husband and their blended family. When she is not writing, cooking, filling her house with friends and looking after their animals, she is usually thanking the Lord for caffeine-filled energy drinks.

I am giving away a brand new ARC of Family Pictures. Please fill out the brief form below. Giveaway ends on Friday, March 15, at 5 pm ET. I will use random.org to determine the winner. Good luck!

Kate Southwood’s grim, gruesome, raw, and intimate novel Falling to Earth is a story about conflict: man against nature, man against man, and man against himself. Southwood’s spare and measured prose attests to the fragility of life and the ultimate triumph of the human spirit. However, there is a darker side to this story—one where fear, jealousy, and suspicion wreak havoc on a man and his family. Falling to Earth is also a timely novel in a year, make that a decade, of extreme weather phenomena.

Southwood sets her tale in Marah, Illinois, in 1925. Not only does she adequately depict life in a Midwestern small town full of proud, hardscrabble people, but she also brings a real event to vivid and terrifying life: the historic Tri-State tornado that devastated the town of Marah and then tore a destructive swath through Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana. At the time, it was the deadliest tornado in American history, killing 695 people and injuring 2, 027.

The tornado hit on March 18, 1925, and Falling to Earth begins moments before the tornado strikes. “The cloud is black, shot through with red and orange and purple, a vein of gold at its crest,” Southwood writes. The tornado is “a mile wide end to end.” The “people in the town scatter; some find shelter. The men and women running through the streets are mothers and fathers, desperate to reach their children at the schools. There is no time; the cloud is rolling over them.” Many scream, but the wind “screams louder” as the “school, the town hall, the shops at the rail yard fold in on themselves and the people inside.” Once “the cloud passes, the fires begin, lapping at the broken town.”

This electrifying opening sets the stage for what is to come. Southwood never lets up but takes readers on a swiftly-paced ride to a shocking conclusion, illustrating the brutal and arbitrary state of nature and, sometimes, of people.

Paul Graves, Southwood’s central character, counts himself and his family lucky. While his friends and neighbors lose loved ones, businesses, and homes, Paul survives the tornado unscathed. He and his family are not even injured, and Paul’s home and his business are undamaged. As the shaken and shattered townspeople of Marah come together to rebuild their lives and their community (without social media to aid them, I might add), they cannot help but look for someone to blame.

The citizens of Marah feel jealous of Paul. He has everything while their whole world is crumbling. They have nothing. Paul experiences overwhelming guilt over his survival, and that sensation only magnifies as his business prospers during the town’s resurgence. Soon, though, the townspeople come to resent Paul and his good fortune and grow hostile toward him and his family. The consequences are tragic.

Southwood’s themes are universal ones: love, family, loss, death, mourning, guilt, and distrust. Falling to Earth is an elegiac tale, yet pockets of hope exist in this story and in Marah, just as they do everywhere, even in times of utter destruction. Humans have mastered so much in this world of ours, yet we still have not bested nature. Mother Nature still reigns over us and perhaps always will.

Sometimes our true selves are only revealed in times of crises, and that is certainly the case in Falling to Earth. Southwood’s characters are in such pain that it moves us and twists our hearts, but in no way does their grief excuse their actions. Falling to Earth forces us to take a good look at ourselves and how we would react in a similar situation. When Southwood injects the most human of emotions—jealousy and suspicion—into her story, she makes it all the more gritty, weighty, and real.

Falling to Earth is a powerfully moving and affective debut, and that is why Barnes and Noble chose it as a Discover Great New Writers selection for spring. Certain passages describing the dead are difficult to read, but a little discomfort is well worth it, for Southwood is a bright new literary talent.

Fuse (Book 2 of the Pure Trilogy) by Julianna Baggott comes out 2/19. Up for grabs is an ARC of the book.

About the Book

After the Detonations, those who dwelled within the Dome were safe, unscarred. Those outside–the Wretches–struggled to survive amid the smoke and ash.

Believing his mother was living among the Wretches, Partridge escaped from the Dome to find her. His father, Willux, the leader of the Pures, unleashes a violent attack on the Wretches in an attempt to regain control over Partridge. It’s up to Pressia Belze, a young woman with her own mysterious past, to decode a set of cryptic clues to set the Wretches free.

An epic quest that sweeps readers into a world of stunning imagination, Fuse continues the story of two people fighting to save their futures–and change the fate of the world.

Bookmagnet Says

Smart, electrifying, and discomfiting, as all dystopian young adult literature should be, Fuse is unlike most of the other books in the genre. The heroine, Pressia, carries scars inside and out; she’s gritty, achingly real, and more powerful than she knows. If any YA character can make you forget Katniss Everdeen, it’s Pressia Belze.

About the Giveaway

Please complete the form below. Up for grabs is an ARC of Fuse. Giveaway ends Monday, 2/18, at 5 pm ET. Winner will be chosen at random.

I am hosting a book giveaway of The After Wife by the incomparable Gigi Levangie Grazer.

About the book:

“Gigi Levangie Grazer, the New York Times bestselling author of The Starter Wife, returns with a hilarious and spirited tale of love—both lost and found.

L.A. is no place for widows. This is what forty-four-year-old Hannah Bernal quickly discovers after the tragic death of her handsome and loving husband, John. Misery and red-rimmed eyes are little tolerated in the land of the beautiful. But life stumbles on: Hannah’s sweet three-year-old daughter, Ellie, needs to be dropped off at her overpriced preschool, while Hannah herself must get back to work in order to pay the bills on “Casa Sugar,” the charming Spanish-styled bungalow they call home.

Fortunately, Hannah has her “Grief Team” for emotional support: earth mother and fanatical animal lover Chloe, who finds a potential blog post in every moment; aspiring actress Aimee, who has her cosmetic surgeon on speed dial; and Jay, Hannah’s TV producing partner, who has a penchant for Mr. Wrong. But after a series of mishaps and bizarre occurrences, one of which finds Hannah in a posh Santa Monica jail cell, her friends start to fear for her sanity. To make matters worse, John left their financial affairs in a disastrous state. And when Hannah is dramatically fired from her latest producing gig, she finds herself in danger of losing her house, her daughter, and her mind.

One night, standing in her backyard under a majestic avocado tree, in the throes of grief, Hannah breaks down and asks, “Why?” The answer that comes back—Why not?—begins an astounding journey of discovery and transformation that leads Hannah to her own truly extraordinary life after death.”

About the author:

“Gigi Levangie Grazer has written numerous screenplays, among them the movie Step-mom, starring Julia Roberts and Susan Sarandon. Her first novel, Rescue Me , was published by Simon and Schuster in June 2000. Her next novel, Maneater, was published by Simon and Schuster in June 2003. The Starter Wife, her third novel, was published in June 2005. Her fourth novel, Queen Takes King, was published in June 2009.

Her fifth novel, The After Wife, will be released July 10, 2012 from Random House.”

About the giveaway:

Giveaway is open to residents of the United States and Canada only. Your book will come directly from the publisher. To enter, simply provide your name and current email address. I will email you privately for your mailing address. One winner will be chosen at random on Friday, July 13, at 3 PM ET.

Today, I am giving away some swag. Giveaway open to US residents only.

What is it? It’s a brand new, never read, pristine copy of Jillian Medoff’s “I Couldn’t Love You More.”

How to win it? In the book, Medoff names three sisters after some of her favorite authors: Margaret Atwood, Sylvia Plath, and George Eliot. If you were writing a book, which author would you name a character after and why?